


Not Too Late

by Nary



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Angst, Day of the Dead, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:27:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/pseuds/Nary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hadn't bought into their whole 'Day of the Dead' hoopla, not until he'd gone through it himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Too Late

_There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;  
There gloom the dark, broad seas._

"You're sure about this?"

"No. But I've gotta try, you understand?" Garibaldi paced anxiously along the hangar, giving the Brakiri cargo ship a final, needless inspection.

"Not really," said Zack, his brow furrowed. "And do you really have to go it alone? We could get a skeleton crew together pretty easily, at least…"

"Yeah, the 'alone' part I'm pretty damn sure about," Garibaldi cut him off.

"Taking a ship like this out on your own - if it were anyone else doing it, you'd tell them they were crazy. No offense," he added belatedly.

"I know it's probably crazy. But the ship's not far from the scrap heap anyway…"

"It's not the ship I'm worried about, Chief. Sorry, old habit," Zack corrected himself.

"Yeah, yeah. Stop fussing over me and get me cleared for take-off, would you?"

"Yessir." He turned before leaving. "And, good luck."

 _I cannot rest from travel; I will drink  
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd  
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those  
That loved me, and alone_

Michael had plenty of time to think during the trip. Once he'd made the jump to the Brakiri star system and programmed the ship's course from there, there was little else he had to do until he reached his destination, other than keeping a watchful eye on the readings and making sure nothing looked like it was going to explode. The smuggler's ship was a piece of shit, no other way of putting it, but it could still take itself to a predetermined point in space - or so he hoped.

Instead of worrying - because, let's face it, if he was going to die out here, there wouldn't be a whole hell of a lot he could do to prevent it at this point - he let his mind wander aimlessly from thought to thought. He shifted uncomfortably in the seat, which was just a little too narrow for comfort, and had a strange ridge along the front that kept him from slouching. Brakiri looked a lot like humans, but their backsides must be fundamentally different in some way, he thought to himself.

He hadn't bought into their whole 'Day of the Dead' hoopla, not until he'd gone through it himself. He still didn't understand why it had happened, how Dodger had been given those few hours to come back and talk to him. For that matter, why had it been _Dodger_ , of all the people he'd lost? The marine was a nice girl, sure, he'd liked her well enough, and maybe they'd had a bit of unfinished business, but he hadn't had any important questions he was burning to ask her, or at least none she'd been able to answer. She hadn't known how she'd gotten there, or where she'd gone after her death, or maybe just hadn't been able to tell him, so what use was that, other than a fun way to kill a few hours? Maybe it had all just been some sort of mass psi effect, a shared hallucination, some weird Brakiri drug slipped into the air vents. If that was the case, then he was going to feel pretty damn stupid sitting by himself in an empty ship for the next day or two. But if it wasn't, if there really was something unexplainable going on here… then, maybe, it would all be worth it.

The Brakiri smuggler had tried to buy her way out of trouble, the way Brakiri tended to do when caught breaking the law. Zack had sent a message to Mars as soon as he'd caught them with a hold full of pirated data crystals, just like Garibaldi had asked him to. "Got a Brakiri cargo ship impounded," he'd told him, and Michael had hopped the first flight to the station.

"This ship is still Brakiri property, right?" he'd asked the smuggler.

"For the right price, it could be yours," she had insinuated with a sly smile.

"No! I can't buy it, I just need to…borrow it, temporarily. A few days at most." She'd looked skeptical, so he'd gone a step further. "I've still got some pull around here, I could see to it that the evidence against you goes 'missing'."

The smuggler, knowing a good deal when she saw it, had agreed, and Garibaldi had his transportation. It had to be Brakiri territory, according to the legends as well as what he'd witnessed himself that night. He wasn't sure if a ship counted as 'territory,' but it was the best he could manage, short of waiting another two hundred years for the comet to circle back again.

He'd done what research he could. He'd asked around, subtly. He learned that no Brakiri had ever tried to approach the comet - the last time it had passed near their homeworld they hadn't even had space flight. And they viewed even the thought of making such an attempt as presumptuous, not to mention sacrilegious. "It would be like… flying to Heaven to demand that your God answer your prayer," one elderly Brakiri had explained to him, aghast.

If that was the case, then so be it. Michael was more than ready to make a few demands of God.

 _And this gray spirit yearning in desire  
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought._

The comet didn't look like much on the viewscreen. A big lumpy ball of ice and rock and who knew what else. Very little like a force of divinity, at any rate. It was far enough from the star it orbited that its surface had cooled, its celebrated tail diminished to almost nothing. It was no longer a huge blazing arrow across the blackness of space, but a dim firefly glow. By Garibaldi's calculations, once it passed the largest gas giant of the Brakiri solar system, it would fade entirely, becoming just another cold, dark mass of matter hurtling through space for another hundred and ninety-eight years or so. He'd timed his arrival perfectly - truth be told, he was probably cutting it a bit close. If anything was going to happen, it would have to be now.

He brought the ship in as close to the comet as he dared, then matched its velocity and trajectory. This was more challenging than it should have been, because he was getting some weird readouts from the sensors, maybe due to interference from the dense ion cloud that surrounded both comet and ship. Still, it was nothing that seemed immediately dangerous. Michael checked the clock, still set to local time in the capitol city of Brakos, and found that he still had about a hundred and ten k'trals left before sunset there. He had no idea whether that would make any difference, out here so far away from the sun itself, or for that matter whether the various chimes and lines of the rituals were crucial to the process or not. No point in stressing out about it now - he had a prickling feeling at the back of his neck that told him that regardless of what he did, _something_ was going to happen.

A hundred and four k'trals. He began to notice that the light on board the ship seemed more diffuse, fainter, and had acquired an odd reddish tinge. Either that or he was seeing things. The instruments were all acting screwy now - temperature gauge said it was below freezing, when he actually felt kind of warm, and now the clock was telling him there were only sixty-one k'trals left in his countdown, but he knew it couldn't have been that long - that would be over an hour, and he'd only been here a few minutes at most. Hadn't he? He wiped his hand across his forehead, feeling dizzy.

"Michael?" The deep voice, so achingly familiar, came from behind him. He hardly dared to look, even though he would have known who it was anywhere.

 _Death closes all; but something ere the end,  
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods._

"Jeff," he answered, without swiveling the chair around to see him. It was taking all his effort to keep his voice steady. "You came."

"You're the one who came, Mike. I was just waiting."

"So you are dead, then."

"Physically, yes. For almost a thousand years. You sound surprised."

"More like confused. Jeff…"

"Yes?"

"I've missed you like hell."

"I know you have, Mike," he said gently.

"Why didn't you come talk to me, before it all went down? Tell me you were going?"

"I wanted to, more than anything. But if I had, you would have insisted on going with me, and you were still needed in the here and now."

"I hate to tell you, Jeff, but I don't think I've done much worthwhile here since you left. Crawled back into the bottle for a while, and lots of bad shit went on because of me. I probably would have been better off somewhere - somewhen - else."

"Don't be so sure of that."

Garibaldi could hear the smile in his voice, and finally turned around, unable to resist the sight of him any longer. "Well," he said a moment later. "This wasn't quite what I expected."

Sinclair raised a self-conscious hand to the Minbari crest atop his bald head. "I know this must be very strange to you."

"Believe me, you turning into a Minbari is only one of the long list of strange things I'm experiencing right now."

Jeff chuckled. "Still the same old Garibaldi. Well, apart from the, ah, hair."

"Yeah, well, you're hardly one to talk."

"Touché."

There was an awkward moment of silence, and Garibaldi began to absorb the sheer distance that separated him from what his old friend had become.

As if reading his mind, Sinclair broke the silence. "It's still me, Mike. Honestly." He held his hand out, an invitation that he seemed braced to have declined. Instead, Michael almost jumped from his seat, grasping for the outstretched hand as if it were the sole tether keeping him from drifting away into the black, and let Jeff draw him roughly into his embrace.

"I thought I'd never see you again, you bastard." Garibaldi's voice was throaty, muffled against his shoulder.

"I know, believe me. I'm so sorry. I didn't think I'd ever see you again either - but it turned out I was wrong, thank goodness."

"Yeah. Sorry. I don't mean to make this all about me. It must've been terrifying for you to actually go through with it, not knowing what would happen."

"Well, I had an inkling - there were the legends of Valen to draw on, at least. And Zathras was very helpful…"

"That weird little alien who always talks in the third person? What does he have to do with any of this?"

"It's a long story. Longer than we have time for right now."

"Oh? So what do we have time for?" Garibaldi's smile was impish, his hands questing down Sinclair's well-muscled arms. In lieu of a direct answer, he received a kiss, slow and lingering, and felt a pair of strong hands pressing so hard against his back it felt as though those fingertips might burn straight through him, melting him like ice.

"Interesting," he said, breathless, when they broke apart briefly.

"What?"

"I've never done it with a Minbari before, that's all." His grin was positively insufferable now, and Jeff had to kiss him again just to wipe it off his face.

And then Mike was pushing him back against the bulkhead, no time for going slow now, and he kicked himself mentally for not having thought to bring a mattress or a blanket or anything to cushion them when they sank to the hard metal floor. Jeff's robes were off in an instant and underneath them he was more or less the same as he'd always been, still as hard and ready as the first time. Garibaldi felt too clumsy to get his own clothes off, so he just took care of the most important parts and left everything else where it was. As they pushed and slid against each other, finding their way to heaven together, Jeff gasped an "I love you" against his cheek. And after that, it didn't matter that he was still half-dressed or that the floor was cold, because they were together again, after four years and a thousand.

 _Come, my friends.  
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world._

"You'll be gone soon, won't you." It wasn't a question, not really. Garibaldi knew that this moment would have to end, and most likely sooner rather than later.

Sinclair nodded. "I don't think it will be too much longer."

"I can't pretend to understand this, Jeff, but I… I'm grateful as hell for it. For having this chance to say things I should have said a million times when you were here."

"So am I. But please, don't be sad."

"How can I be anything else? You're going back to Heaven or wherever dead people go, and I'll never see you again, not while I'm alive."

"We Minbari" - how strange to hear those words on his lips - "believe that souls are reborn again and again, in new bodies."

"So you're saying someday I might meet up with your… reincarnation, or whatever? I don't know... It wouldn't be the same, Jeff. It wouldn't be you."

Sinclair just smiled, which somehow looked all the more enigmatic given his altered features. "Maybe not. But there are many ways of loving. What you have with Lise, for instance…"

"Oh, Lise is great, don't get me wrong. And she puts up with my bullshit, which is more than most women would do. But it's not the same."

"No, of course it's not. No two loves are ever identical. That doesn't make one less true than the other."

"Don't go all philosophical on me, Jeff."

"I can't help it, it's what I do," he replied. "But I can tell you something more concrete, if you'd rather."

"By all means."

"We will meet again, in the flesh. The same flesh - well, more or less the same."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let's just say that the bald look suits you. The crest won't look at all out of place."

"What the hell? You mean I'm going to go back to there…then…whenever you are - were?" Garibaldi's words didn't seem to want to come out properly, his thoughts were too chaotic, and his mind didn't seem to have been designed to process the verb tenses required to discuss this situation. "How?" he finally managed to ask.

"Will you follow me into fire, will you follow me into darkness?" Sinclair asked, his face growing serious, then suddenly shook his head and smiled, reaching out to caress Garibaldi's face tenderly. "It's still too soon. But I promise you'll understand, when the right moment comes, and you'll know what to do. We'll have many years together, once upon a time"

"I love you, Jeff."

There was no answer. When Garibaldi looked up again, his lover was gone, snuffed out like a candle flame, and the ship felt empty and echoing in a way it hadn't before. On the viewscreen, he could see that the comet's glow had faded so far as to be imperceptible to human eyes. Fortunately, the ship's sensors appeared to be returning to normal. He sat back down in the navigator's uncomfortable seat. Ordinarily he would have been frustrated by Jeff's enigmatic answers to his questions, but all he could keep repeating, bewildered but hopeful, was "I'm going to see him again!" Humming 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' under his breath, he set a course back to the station.

 _One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield._


End file.
